MacStories Weekly: Issue 69
In this issue: Pixelmator, apps for staying focused on your Mac, Brian Capps’ Home screen, plus the usual Workflow Corner, Weekly Q&A, a Toggl tip, Links, stickers, and recap of MacStories articles.
MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS
Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.
Pixelmator
When I last looked through the list of favorite selections in past issues of MacStories Weekly, I couldn’t believe Pixelmator had never been selected. Though we’ve written about Pixelmator plenty before, our list of apps that deserve to be on everyone’s device wouldn’t be complete without it.
The photo editing app debuted on the Mac, but has since expanded to both iPad and iPhone as well. I’ve been a Pixelmator user since its early days on the Mac, but have since moved to exclusively use its iOS version; both versions are top-notch, and come with my highest recommendation, but I’ll focus on the iOS app here.
On a scale of power and complexity, photo editors can range all over the map. On iOS especially, there is no shortage of photo editing apps – I currently have fifteen on my iPad. In my mind Pixelmator is the app that stands perfectly in the middle of Apple’s Photos and Adobe’s Photoshop when it comes to complexity. Photos is sufficient for some basic edits, but anything more than a simple crop or color adjustment will stretch the app too far (apart from third-party extensions). Photoshop is on the opposite end of the spectrum, capable of handling anything I could want, but because it’s so powerful, it can seem overly complex for the tasks I need to accomplish. If I were a professional photographer, I would likely want the feature set of Photoshop on my side, but since I’m not, the app can seem overwhelming – and Adobe’s Creative Cloud overpriced – for my needs. Right in the middle of those two apps sits Pixelmator, which is powerful enough to do what I need without being overly complex or difficult to navigate.
One way to think of Pixelmator is that it is to Apple Photos what Pages is to Notes. It’s a more powerful and complex tool for heavier duty tasks. One reason I make this comparison is that Pixelmator very much resembles Pages and the other iWork apps; from its interface down to the icon design, Pixelmator feels like an iWork app.
Pixelmator stores documents in iCloud Drive for convenient access across all your devices. Though it probably wasn’t the first third-party app to implement iCloud Drive support, it was the first one I can remember. Pixelmator presents documents on the main menu in an iWork-like grid, where they can be dragged and dropped on to each other to create folders.
With Pixelmator you can create new images or import from Photos or a third-party document provider. Once you have an image open, the toolset is hidden behind a handful of familiar icons in the top-right corner of the screen. I appreciate how Pixelmator’s tools don’t get in the way of the image, but instead pop out in a menu when you need them, and disappear when you don’t.
Most of Pixelmator’s tools are found by tapping the first icon, which resembles a paint brush. Tools are organized in broad categories like ‘Paint and Erase’, ‘Retouch’, and ‘Add Effects’, and I’ve found that these categories help ensure that I’m never overwhelmed with options. Drilling down within each category presents more options, but those options appear in a new screen where you can cycle between tools with ease. Next to the paint brush icon is a plus button, from which you can add photos, text, backgrounds, and shapes to the image. The next icon, the settings gear, includes the helpful Image Setup tool for adjusting a photo’s dimensions.
The team behind Pixelmator continually works to keep the app one of the best options for your photo editing needs. On the iPad especially, excellent Apple Pencil support and Split View multitasking are highlights. I can’t list all of Pixelmator’s tools and features, but I can say that I’ve never needed to make an edit that Pixelmator couldn’t accomplish for me. Its power, combined with a delightful ease of use, make it an app I wouldn’t want to be without.
MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS
Stay Focused on Your Mac
Tadam
Sometimes the simplest tool is the best. If all you want is a way to quickly set a timer to focus on the task at hand, Tadam is a great solution. The app was inspired by the Pomodoro technique. By default, Tadam suggests a 25-minute timer, but you can set it to whatever length of time you prefer. You can pause or stop the timer early if you wish, but when the timer runs out, the idea is to take a five-minute break, set another timer, and do another 25-minute sprint. As the end of a timer approaches, you get a system notification, so you know to wrap up what you are doing. When time runs out, a bell chimes, prompting you to add more time to the work timer or start a break, during which Tadam displays a big window on your screen that prevents you from even looking at your work unless you click the ‘Get Back to Work’ button.
Tadam makes it easy to get to timers whatever you are doing by sitting in the menu bar. The circular menu bar icon also updates while the timer is running to show you roughly how much time remains before your next break, which is a nice touch.
Pomodoro Time Management
Pomodoro Time Management takes the Pomodoro technique a little further than Tadam. It’s opinionated, restricting you to 20-30 minute work timers and 2-8 minute short breaks. Those durations are consistent with the technique but are problematic if you want more control over the length of your timers.
The app also lets you create sets of up to four work timers broken up by short breaks and a long break at the end of each series. You can set goals for the number of pomodoros you want to complete each day, all of which is displayed graphically in the app with circular progress graphs. When you create a timer, you can label it with the task on which you are working. That way, after you’ve used the app for a while, you can get a sense for your productivity by clicking the reports button, which generates beautiful charts of your completed tasks and productivity over time, which will make Pomodoro more useful than simple timers for some people.
Be Focused Pro
Be Focused Pro (there is also a free non-pro version available) distinguishes itself by being available on macOS and iOS, which is great if you split your time between both platforms as I do. The app also includes basic task management and reports. If you bill your time or want to do further analysis of your productivity in a spreadsheet, you can export a CSV file with the tasks completed and time spent on each.
Work intervals can be scheduled in five-minute intervals up to 25 minutes long, while short breaks can be 1-10 or 15 minutes long. Like Pomodoro, Be Focused also includes the option to specify longer breaks after a selectable number of sets. Overall, I prefer the reports of Pomodoro, but Be Focused provides more flexibility in setting up your timers if that is what is most important to you.
Due
Timers are great, but sometimes you need to do something at a particular time that you cannot forget, like an appointment with someone. If you’re deep in a work sprint, it’s easy to forget those kinds of commitments, which is why Due is so handy. Due is available on macOS and iOS and syncs between them. Most of my tasks reside in Todoist, but I use Due to avoid cluttering my task list with one-off commitments. Due is the best option for those sorts of tasks because I can be set to nag me until I pay attention. That would be annoying for every task I have to complete in a day, but it’s perfect for time-critical ones.
HazeOver
Over the course of a day, the number of open apps on my Mac tends to multiply across multiple desktops. Many days I’m working in Ulysses with the window stretched fully across the screen, but other tasks involve juggling multiple windows.
Staring at a screen with half a dozen windows open at once can be distracting. HazeOver addresses that problem by dimming all windows other than the one in which you are working. The app has several preferences to make it look exactly the way you want, including settings to adjust the opacity of the haze applied to the inactive part of the screen and the color applied to the inactive region. You can also toggle HazeOver on and off with a keyboard shortcut, so it’s only active when you need it.
TIPS
Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.
Roll Your Own Toggl Mac App
You know from Federico’s workflows that he’s been using Toggl to track his time for a while now. I’ve been using the service too, but, like Federico, I’m not that happy with its iOS app, or, in my case, its Mac app. When I’m working on my Mac, I usually use the web interface instead of Toggl’s desktop client, but I often have a lot of tabs open in Safari, which makes it easy to lose track of Toggl and harder to start and stop timers.
The easiest solution I’ve found is to create a web app with Fluid, a single-site web browser. All you need to do is paste in the Toggl timer URL, name your web app, and pick a location to store it.
By default, Fluid uses the favicon from Toggl’s website as your web app’s icon. That’s not great with Toggl because its favicon is gray and white. Instead, I suggest downloading the Toggl desktop app, right clicking on it and picking ’Show Package Contents.’ Open the Resources folder and copy (don’t move) the red app icon to your drive and point Fluid at it. Now, you’ll have a nice bright red Toggl icon in your Dock. I also suggest going into your newly-created Toggl app’s preferences and setting a keyboard shortcut to make switching to Toggl even faster.
SHORTCUTS CORNER
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
Shortcuts Essentials
Advanced Toggl Timers with Dictionaries
In what should be considered a regular mini series of the Workflow Corner at this point, I recently came up with a system to make my Toggl time tracking workflows (previously: MacStories and Issue 63 of MacStories Weekly) even more flexible while reducing their footprint in the Workflow widget (where most of my interactions with these workflows take place).
First, to cut the number of workflows displayed in the widget, I grouped some of them into individual “launcher” workflows that use the new ‘Run Workflow’ action to execute an external workflow. In the example below, you can see how a menu allows me to pick from a variety of MacStories-related timers; depending on what I choose, a different ‘Run Workflow’ action is called to invoke the associated workflow.
Thanks to this shortcut method – a meta-workflow to launch other workflows – I’ve been able to integrate multiple timers into launchers, thus making the entire dashboard more compact and readable. Having new and better glyphs for each workflow also helps.
The most important functional change to my Toggl workflows, though, is how I’ve started relying on dictionaries and Magic Variables to pass data to the Toggl API.
In my original Toggl workflows, the implementation of API variables was fairly rudimentary: parameters such as project IDs and timer descriptions were passed to ‘Get Contents of URL’ as ‘Text’ actions; with version 1.7 of Workflow, I was able to remove the ‘Set Variable’ steps, but, due to the use of ‘Text’ actions, workflows were still quite long and not too legible.
I’ve since realized that, when it comes to dealing with groups of text variables related to each other, we can use a ‘Dictionary’ action and extract the information we need through Magic Variables. With this method, variables are kept together in the same dictionary and workflows are slimmer, which makes it an ideal solution for long workflows where you want to display multiple choices and menus.
Consider, for instance, a Toggl timer where you need to pass the following data to the Toggl API:
- A timer’s description
- Project ID
- Task ID
- Tag name
Before, I would have recommended to set up four separate ‘Text’ actions. Now, we can cut it all down to a single ‘Dictionary’ action where values are the variables we need for the API:
Besides being more readable (you can use any name you want for the dictionary keys – even emoji), the savings enabled by dictionaries in lieu of ‘Text’ actions add up if you’re creating workflows with multiple options. If you do the math, while a menu with three options containing 4 actions each consistent of a total of 12 actions before, this new system will cut it down to 3 actions. This is possible because dictionaries can contain multiple sub-items that can be extracted at runtime with Magic Variables.
For this method to work with a ‘Choose from Menu’ block, it is necessary that the dictionaries you use carry the same key names. To make the request to the Toggl API, in fact, we’ll rely on one Magic Variable – the output of the entire menu block, parsed as a dictionary, and set to extract a specific value. Essentially, we’re telling Workflow “get whatever I picked in this menu, interpret it as a dictionary, and extract this specific key”.
A visual representation makes it more clear:
In my example above, you can see how I created a MacStories Team timer workflow with 3 options for Jake, John, and Ryan. Each writer has one ‘Dictionary’ action instead of four ‘Text’ actions. From a menu of three options, a single API request can be made because Workflow can look at a Magic Variable output and always expect the same value to be available no matter what I picked.
I didn’t do a precise calculation, but I’d say that, with this strategy, I’ve roughly slimmed down these advanced Toggl workflows by 70%. I even prefer the way they look because they’re shorter, dictionaries are more descriptive than ‘Text’ actions, and there aren’t a bunch of unused API actions lying around.
I’ve prepared the structure of a sample Toggl Menu workflow to get you started. You can download it here. To extract the data needed for Toggl workflows, you’ll still need the Prepare Toggl Template workflow I released in Issue 63 of MacStories Weekly.
Backup Your Workflows
While it’s fun to play around and create new workflows every week, at some point you’ll want to make sure you have a backup of all the automations you’ve set up in the Workflow app. Enabling Workflow Sync is a good first measure, but I’d also recommend setting up a manual backup system to archive a “hard copy” of all your workflows somewhere else.
Of course – and we’re getting into dangerously DiCaprio-esque territory here (it’s been this week’s theme) – we can make a workflow to backup all your workflows. In fact, all it takes is one action: with the ‘Get My Workflows’ action, the app will generate a collection of every workflow you have installed as a .wflow file. These files can be manually re-imported in the app with the Open In menu on iOS.
If you combine ‘Get My Workflows’ with ‘Make Archive’, Workflow will generate a .zip archive of all your workflows. Thanks to Magic Variables, I set the archive’s file name to a custom date and time string, which makes it easier to see when a backup was created.
You can send the .zip backup to any app or service you want. In my case, I prefer Dropbox as that’s where I keep all of my app and document backups. This backup strategy lets me delete workflows I don’t want to see in the app but which I also don’t want to lose forever. This way, I can always extract the archive, find the workflow I need, and install it again by copying it into the app.
You can get the workflow here.
SHORTCUTS CORNER
Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.
Member Requests
Question: I’ve seen that there are separate Workflow actions for play and pause. Can a single workflow button be made that will “play” music if nothing is currently playing, and “pause” if something is? (Jim Krenz, @Lecter)
Workflow can’t see whether audio is currently playing or if it’s been paused by the user, and I believe that’s due to an iOS limitation by Apple. We can’t create a conditional block that checks that information for us. The entire iOS media framework should be expanded to allow developers to fetch more details about what’s playing, see what kind of audio it is (podcast, song, etc.), and control playback.
Question: Is there a way to quickly access the contents of a note and copy it to the clipboard using Workflow widgets?
I would like to be able to use Workflow to get the contents of any note and copy it to the clipboard so I can paste hashtags into Instagram. I would like to use the dictionary feature so I can quickly select from multiple collections of hashtags.
I would use Apple Notes but it also copies the title of the note. It seems like Workflow works well with Bear but I can’t use it because every #hashtag becomes a notebook. Can this be done using DEVONthink or Evernote? (Óscar, @omorillon)
This isn’t possible with DEVONthink, but it can be done with Evernote. Workflow offers native web actions for Evernote, which allow you to retrieve notes from your account without switching between apps.
To get the contents of a specific note, you’ll have to use the ‘Get Notes’ Evernote action and specify a title and notebook (optionally, a tag too) for the note you want Workflow to access. As you requested, you can pre-fill a dictionary with keys and values for different note titles, and then pick one from a list. The value field of the dictionary will be used as the title parameter in the ‘Get Notes’ action.
When using this action, Workflow is performing a search in your account to retrieve notes, so the more details you can enter in the action, the more accurate the results will be. Ideally, if you enter a title, notebook, and choose to only get one note, that note will be what you’re looking for.
To copy the note’s text to the clipboard, you should then add ‘Get Text from Input’ and ‘Copy to Clipboard’. Finally, save the workflow as a widget. The next time you run the workflow as a widget, you’ll see a progress bar while Workflow is pinging Evernote, and the text of the note matched in your Evernote account will be copied to the clipboard. If you want to have further confirmation of the process at the end, you can add a ‘Show Alert’ action that tells you that everything has been successfully copied.
You can get the workflow here.
Question: For a while now, I’ve been taking advantage of a quirk of the “Append to Dropbox” action in Drafts. If the name of the file isn’t created yet, it can create it for me; if the file has been created before, it will proceed with the normal appending behavior.
However, there isn’t a clear way of doing this for Bear notes. I’ve been trying to use Workflow and Drafts to automate a similar system thanks to Bear’s new Workflow integrations. However, I haven’t been able to find a way to replicate the “Create if not present, append if present” functionality. Is there a way to do this? (Anonymous)
Alas, it appears that Bear doesn’t automatically create a new note if the URL scheme sends an append command for a note that doesn’t already exist (assuming we’re referencing the note by title, which is what I tested). I’d suggest getting in touch with the developers and bringing this up, because it would be a reasonable addition to Bear’s URL scheme.
Question: I was curious if there is a way to save all attachments from a single message to a folder in either Dropbox or Google Drive (or Box or anywhere) with Workflow, IFTTT, Zapier or any other ideas? (Tim Bauer, @TinierTim)
Assuming you use Gmail, I’d recommend Zapier for this.
Zapier supports a variety of triggers for new emails: for instance, you can set a zap to run every time there’s a new message with a specific label, when you star a message, when a message matches a search, or when there’s a new message with an attachment. You can even trigger a zap to run every time you receive a new email, period.
For the purpose of this question, I’ll use a new starred message as an example. In Zapier, create a new trigger for Gmail with ‘New Starred Email’ as the filter. Then, connect the Dropbox action ‘Upload File’ and edit the template of the action. Here, you’ll want to specify where attachments should be saved in your Dropbox account and if they should overwrite existing files.
To save all attachments from a single message, use the ‘All Attachments’ variable from Step 1 (pictured above), which will get all attachments from an email message and save them as individual files in a Dropbox folder. Run a first test (make sure you’ve already starred a message that contains attachments), save the zap, and make sure it’s turned on.
The next time you star a message with attachments, Zapier will save them as files to a Dropbox folder. I wish there was an easier way to do this natively on iOS from any client, but, as I’ve said many times before, dealing with multiple files at once on iOS is still not possible.
Question: In a recent newsletter, you pointed out how Mail can’t integrate with TaskPaper, because Mail can’t send text to Workflow. How would this be done with Airmail and TaskPaper, which supports text files stored in Dropbox? (Evan, @40Tech)
We can send Airmail messages to TaskPaper thanks to a custom action that launches a workflow. From the workflow, you can then decide your favorite way of appending a line of text to a file in Dropbox.
Here’s what I did. I assumed you wanted a way to turn an Airmail message into a line of text indented in a TaskPaper project with the following details:
- Sender email address
- Email subject
- Airmail link to the message
That meant I had to create a custom action that sends those three parameters to Workflow, which would need to extract them and recombine them in a line of text formatted for the TaskPaper syntax.
Setting up the custom action in Airmail is easy: create a new action, add ‘Send to Workflow’ as the only step, enter the name of the workflow you’ll run (let’s call it ‘TaskPaper Email’) and flip three switches, as pictured above. Then, enter %%TP%% as a custom separator.
In Workflow, I set up a series of actions that split the text at the custom separator and that process Magic Variables to extract the three items we sent from Airmail: the sender’s email address, the message subject, and the unique URL to the Airmail message. These variables are remixed in a ‘Text’ action that creates a new “task” according to TaskPaper’s syntax. I assumed you would have appreciated a way to quickly reopen an Airmail message on both iOS and macOS, so I added the message link at the end of the line.
Now, it’s up to you and how you want to append content to a text file in Dropbox. Workflow has a native ‘Append to Dropbox File’ action, which I’d recommend using as it’ll get the job done. Or, you could send the text to Editorial or other text editors that integrate with Dropbox. It’s your call. Whatever you do, just add a final action after the last ‘Text’ one.
You can get the workflow here.
And now, a fantastic workflow by Club member Brent to stitch multiple screenshots together:
Brent: I thought I would explain a workflow that I use on a semi-regular basis. I call it Screenshot Stitcher. I use this when I want to take a screenshot of something that is longer than the actual screen of the iPhone. In fact, I used it in my post about Re-Using a checklist when I showed a picture of the full workflow.
This workflow requires the use of another app called LongScreen. I could just use the app by itself to achieve the same result, but I prefer the way the workflow triggers it.
It works like this:
- I take a series of overlapping screenshots (meaning the bottom of one is the same as the top of the next. LongScreen uses the overlapping areas to align them.
- I trigger the workflow which finds all screenshots taken in the last 45 seconds. This allows the system to be automated Vs. me having to manually pick what pictures.
- Workflow then counts the number of pictures that were selected.
- It sends that number as part of LongScreen’s URL Scheme telling the app how many pictures to stitch together.
- I chose to have the stitched output placed on the clipboard.
- The actual URL I use is
longscreen://x-callback-url/copy?&mode=stitch&count=**Input**(with Input being a variable action in workflow)
- At this point in LongScreen I usually just see a white screen for a few seconds while it processes the pictures.
- Back in Workflow, the selected pictures are deleted. I could also delete them via LongScreen but I found the results were more consistent if I had Workflow do it.
- Workflow retrieves the picture from the clipboard and using a Quick Look action shows it to me so that I can decide what I would like to do with it.
If you want to use this workflow, but don’t want to recreate it yourself, then you can get it here.
Feel free to tell me what you think. As always, the best way to reach me is on Twitter. (Brent, @brentacPrime)
WEEKLY Q&A
Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.
Question: I use the iPhone’s Clock app every day. I was wondering how to add it to Launch Center Pro or a widget? (Samuel Cheng)
I don’t see any Clock shortcuts in Launch Center Pro, but I tried with Magic Launcher (which I recently started using on both my iPhone and iPad), and the app offers a variety of Clock launchers for different sections, such as Alarm and Timer. Magic Launcher’s Clock shortcuts will only work when tapped from the widget.
Question: Are there any specific workflows you run from your Watch? (Anonymous, @brentacPrime)
I’ve never used Workflow’s watchOS app much, but I’ve considered the idea of triggering my Toggl time-tracking workflows from it. My problem with Workflow’s Watch app is that the iOS widget is usually faster and more powerful than the constrained watchOS experience.
Question: After the Instapaper downtime, I started saving articles to both Instapaper and Pocket. I’ve noticed when I clip the MacStories Weekly posts to Pocket, I only get the first section. Is there a workaround for this? (Mark Crump, @crumpy)
I’ve heard this from multiple Club members so far, and I’m not sure where the problem lies. I believe Pocket’s parser doesn’t like MailChimp’s newsletter web views, which, unfortunately, is something we can’t fix.
Question: I got PDFViewer after reading your review, and it is great at annotating. But I can’t figure out how to rename an annotated document to keep the original as it was? (Floyd Bloom)
From the file manager view, tap the edit button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Select the PDF you want to rename, which adds a checkmark to the circle next to its file name. Next, tap the ‘Ab|’ button in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, which will open a view from which you can change the file’s name.
Question: I’m looking for an app to consolidate my interactions with people. One place to click on a person and see all email, chat, social and other conversations. Any recommendations? (Andy Wall, @andyjwall)
The closest I’ve seen to something like you describe is BusyContacts by busymac, the developers of the popular BusyCal app. BusyContacts is a robust macOS contact manager that, among many other things, lets you consolidate calendar events, email messages, texts from Messages, and tweets in an activity list organized by contact. If anyone is aware of an app that consolidates a broader array of communication channels, please write in so we can highlight it for other Club MacStories members.
In last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly, we received a question about the ability to view invisible characters in iOS text editors. A number of Club members have reached out to us to point out that Panic’s Coda has an option to display invisible characters. While not strictly a text editor for prose, at least there’s a way to show these characters on iOS, and Coda is a solid app.
INTERESTING LINKS
Great reads and links from around the web.
Anker, makers of popular accessories such as cables and battery packs, have announced that their next batteries will have a faster charging chip called PowerIQ 2.0. The first model will go on sale in May.
1Password has largely shifted to a subscription model, and the latest update to the Mac version makes the app free to download from the Mac App Store. The app has also been updated with deeper Touch bar controls.
Bare Bones Software has confirmed that, with BBEdit now a free download, their lightweight editor TextWrangler will be discontinued with the next version of macOS.
Spotify is testing a higher-priced Hi-Fi tier for lossless streaming. The company also announced they now have over 50 million subscribers.
Quire, a task manager for iOS, has implemented SiriKit integration with a clever workaround – using the assistant’s messaging domain.
MailButler, a powerful plugin for Apple Mail on the Mac, now has a team plan called MailButler Business. The service offers email tracking, profile cards, team management features and stats, and lots more.
How UI design has evolved on Dribbble between 2009 and 2017. A good summary of UI trends and modern conventions.
Speaking of designers, Abstract (currently in private beta) wants to change how teams can share and collaborate on design assets. Khoi Vinh interviews co-founder and CEO Josh Brewer.
Netflix announced a new AI-based compression algorithm at the Mobile World Congress this week. According to a report by Joon Ian Wong for Quartz, the new technology, called Dynamic Optimizer, is aimed at delivering a better streaming experience in parts of the world where phones and tablets are used most often to watch Netflix.
Alec Kinnear has a comprehensive comparison of apps for creating and editing tables in Markdown, complete with tables comparing the features of each.
THE ALBUM
We love stickers in iMessage, and here we'll share some of our favorites.
Culinary Stickers
Food stickers are one of my favorite categories. This pack features a wide variety of foods with bold colors and a cool, chunky style.
Fries Animated Stickers
This animated fry-guy has lots of personality and has a knack for getting into trouble with birds and ketchup.
Chunk
Chunk is a delightful hand-drawn character that comes to life through playful animations.
Animated Food
Animated ice cream cones, sandwiches, snacks, and a donut rolling across your messages add foodie flair to you conversations.
Emodeo
This is a small set but one of my favorite implementations of animated smileys yet. It’s quickly dominated my recent sticker list.
Science Stickers
Say it with science. This is a big set of bright beakers, molecules, flasks, and other science items.
Sumikko Gurashi
The line of popular critters by San-X has found its way to iMessage with stickers showing creatures with amusingly blank expressions in various everyday scenarios. The zoomed…animal (penguin? duck? unidentified fat bird?) peeking from a corner is perfect.
SciMoji: Women of Science
This is a great sticker pack that celebrates the top women scientists and engineers in history. From Kathrine Blodgett (she invented the low-reflectance glass used in eyeglasses) to Lise Meitner (she led the team that discovered the nuclear fission or uranium), this pack will add character and a good dose of science to your conversations.
Heart You
Ever wished you could display various expressions as tiny, humanized hearts? Heart You’s stickers include a heart that hasn’t slept much (I can relate, little guy) and one upset because it’s Monday. Unrealistic characters for credible struggles.
Grumpy Bear Stickers
Whether you’re a bear who hit it big and can sleep on stacks of cash or if you got stuck in a slice of pizza, these stickers are for you. Also, if you’re a bear, I’m not sure how you could be possibly reading this right now. If you just like bears, this pack by Michael Briscoe is one of the funniest ones I’ve discovered recently.
APP DEBUTS
Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.
Puff
Puff is an insanely difficult, pixelated nightmare arcade game. Depending on your gaming disposition, that’s either a great thing or a recipe for frustration. Despite the difficulty, I like this game a lot. You control ‘Puff’ who is launched from a tube at the bottom of the screen. To stay aloft, you need to tap an onscreen button repeatedly a little like Flappy Bird. Two other buttons let you shoot left and right, which is also how you move back and forth across the screen. Like Flappy Bird, when you first try Puff, you won’t last long, but after you get the hang of the mechanics, beating your high score can become addictive.
Duplicate File Finder & Remover
This app is a solid duplicate file finder and remover that’s available on the Mac App Store. In my preliminary tests, the app scanned folders with thousands of files quickly. The results pair files that are deemed duplicates and gives you several options for picking which to delete, including newest, oldest, and manually.
geekpod
With geekpod, you can organize your favorite media all in one place including movies, video games, books, and more. Based on your collection, geekpod creates a custom news feed of Reddit articles, which is a great way to discover new media. With the latest version of geekpod, you can also buy and sell media with people who share your interests.
Space
Space is a beautiful app that lets you build an entire universe full of stars, planets, comets, asteroids, and much more. The app lets you explore and play with interstellar physics in a way that is fun and educational. Space was named a Best App of 2016 by Apple for its iPad app. With the release of version 2.0 this week, Space is available as a Universal app that runs on your iPhone too.
StageToStereo
This app was recommended to me by a MacStories reader, and it’s a fantastic idea if you’re a fan of live music. StageToStereo can access the popular database of concert setlists at Setlist.fm and show you which songs an artist played where and when. You can then export a setlist as a playlist to Apple Music. If you, like me, tend to prepare for concerts by getting up to speed on old songs an artist is likely going to perform, StageToStereo is for you.
Simple Scale
There’s no shortage of weight trackers for iPhone. Simple Scale, as the name suggests, is a new option in this field that stands out thanks to its minimalist and elegant design. Simple Scale is meant for users who want to track their weight data points manually, which the app will display as a chart over time. You can also backup the app’s library (and restore it in the future) by logging in with a Google account.
Where To?
Version 10.5 of the popular location app has added a unified search to find categories, places, and contacts from one screen as well as the ability to view user images in reviews alongside comments from business owners. Thanks to integration with FutureTap’s other location app, the Google Street View browser Streets, you’ll also be able to view 360-degree photos and indoor panoramas directly in Where To. You can read an in-depth explanation of the new features at FutureTap’s blog.
Covers
I like to browse YouTube to discover emerging artists who usually get started by performing cover versions of popular songs. Covers is a beautiful new iPhone app that lets you easily stream cover songs from YouTube without loading the YouTube website at all. You don’t even need to log into your Google account: just load Covers and search for something (or tap one of the recommendations). The app’s interface feels fresh, and I’ve already discovered some great new artists (such as Emir Taha) thanks to Covers.
Popcorn
If you don’t want to sign up for Letterboxd and if you think that browsing IMDb is too complex, Popcorn might be the movie discovery utility you’ve been waiting for. This app brings you a handpicked collection of movies to watch every day. You can browse by genre, but the core feature of Popcorn is the Home page, where you’ll find curated lists such as “Great Dystopian Movies” or “Movies Starring Robots”. There’s a delightful use of swipeable cards and accent colors in the app, which also lets you watch trailers, add movies to your watchlist, and buy them on the iTunes Store. Plus, movie pages look great and the entire interface is playful and classy.
Nintendo Switch Parental Controls
With today’s worldwide launch of its new Switch console, Nintendo has also released the associated Parental Controls app for iPhone. If you have kids who want to play with the Switch, you’ll be able to set play-time limits, supervise their gameplay, and restrict certain features based on your child’s age. In addition, you can view monthly summaries for gameplay statistics – something that is currently absent from the Switch UI on the console itself.
HOME SCREENS
Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.
Brian Capps
Twitter: @bcapps. Co-founder of Lickability.
I have a confession to make: I don’t use my Home screen very much anymore. With search, extensions, and Siri Suggestions, more often than not I can get to the right place without the hassle of hunting around on my Home screens. However, some of my favorite and most-used apps still vie for a coveted spot on my neglected page one. Although you’ll see many of the usual suspects, including a large ratio of built-in apps exposing me as the Apple shill that I am, there are a few interesting apps worth a further look.
Splitwise is an expense-splitting app that has been an indispensable part of my Home screen for years now, and is an all-time favorite of mine. It is a wonderfully straightforward service that allows you to add bills and purchases that you want to split with your friends and forego the scrawled IOUs and awkward money conversations. It’s surprisingly robust, supporting groups for trips or households, tags and categories, and a bunch more. If you live with roommates or simply go out with your friends and split the bill: you need this app.
As someone who knew nothing about personal finance, and quite frankly was a little intimidated by the topic, I could not be happier with Betterment as an investment service. The service is dead simple, and the app is one of the few good finance apps in the entire industry. It tells you everything you need to know in a refreshingly sparse and precisely polished interface, without the bloat of many of their competitors (looking at you, Vanguard). Even though you’re not supposed to look at passive investments too frequently, I open this app all the time just to remind myself that good finance apps really do exist.
Journalism may not be a very popular profession right now, but it’s rapidly becoming increasingly vital for sifting through an avalanche of misinformation and outright deception. The New York Times is doing its best work in years, and they finally have a pricing model that makes sense. I read it, among others, every single day, and I’d recommend subscribing to support the high caliber of journalism they provide.
Want to mark up my Home screen and show me all the ways it’s bad? I’m @bcapps on Twitter, and I’d be honored to receive your scathing Pinpoint annotations.
PREVIOUSLY, ON MACSTORIES
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